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The Book of Tells (Peter Collett)[unlocked]

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THE BOOK OF TELLS<br />

movement to depart. This is especially true when someone<br />

repeatedly shifts his or her weight from one foot to<br />

the other. When you see someone with the buttress<br />

stance it's worth looking at where the toe <strong>of</strong> their buttress<br />

foot is pointing because it <strong>of</strong>ten shows what they're thinking.<br />

Sometimes the foot is pointing at someone who the<br />

person is secretly thinking about; most <strong>of</strong> the time, however,<br />

you'll find that it's pointing in the direction where<br />

they're hoping to make their escape.<br />

One <strong>of</strong> the lessons we learn from watching conversations<br />

is how skilled people are at synchronizing their turns and<br />

timing their interjections and interruptions down to a few<br />

milliseconds. In spite <strong>of</strong> our remarkable talent for coordinating<br />

conversations and knowing what to say to each<br />

other, we have very little conscious awareness <strong>of</strong> the<br />

principles on which our expertise is based. Next time you<br />

get a chance, ask someone whose conversation you've just<br />

witnessed what they've been doing, and see what they say.<br />

You might find that they can <strong>of</strong>fer you a fairly detailed<br />

account <strong>of</strong> who said what to whom. But they won't be<br />

able to tell you how they oriented towards the other<br />

person, how they used their hands and eyes to hold the<br />

floor, or how they managed to ward <strong>of</strong>f several attempted<br />

interruptions. Most <strong>of</strong> us are like this. In spite <strong>of</strong> our<br />

enormous talent as conversationalists, we're remarkably<br />

ignorant <strong>of</strong> the tells that we produce and those that we<br />

respond to. Listening to other people's conversations and<br />

watching them more closely won't necessarily make us<br />

more interesting conversationalists. But it will give us a<br />

much better understanding <strong>of</strong> the way that people try to<br />

control the floor and attempt to influence each other.<br />

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